Monday, June 23, 2008

Jessie Sick?

A Tale Of Two Sick GollihughsYeppers, and it was a DOOZY! Jess doesn't get sick terribly often. When he has in the past, he usually just sleeps a bit more than usual and then he's well again. Well, due to circumstances, he wasn't able to sleep more than usual prior to the onslaught of this illness. So, he came home from work Saturday night because he was so ill he wasn't much good for anything AT work.

If the fact that he actually came home from work sick wasn't alarming enough, he also felt so bad and weak and unlike himself that he actually broke down in a full-on ugly cry. You know ugly cries, right? The sobbing, the snotting, the wracking pain of the pain of it. Well, at least that's what they are like for me. And this was the first time for me to see something similar from Jess! This alarmed me GREATLY!

Now, I know crying is totally okay. It's actually quite cleansing for the body. Did you know? Tears carry within them chemical that are harmful to the body - so it's a release both emotionally and physically - so it is quite good for any body to release them - YES, even guys!! Really, I'm quite okay with any guy crying. But the fact is, Jess just doesn't cry. Okay, so he shed some tears at the birth of each of our daughters. And he may have actually shed tears, at most, 3 other times... but the fact that he just doesn't cry - generally speaking - causes me some concern and often alarm if/when he does/has.

Prior to this explosion of emotion, Jess cried (tears falling from his eyes) a full 4 or 5 times. That doesn't mean, however, that he was sobbing or full-on CRYING the ugly cry. I have heard him cry like THAT once and seen it, maybe, once. But even the time I can think of having seen him in an ugly cry it wasn't as ugly as Saturday night. Now, this is not to berate or make fun of my husband. On the contrary, it's more as a way of illustrating 2 things. 1: Jessie was sicker than he's EVER been during the course of our 7.5+ years together. 2: I was scared out of my skin when he was breaking down. If you did not understand how completely uncharacteristic this sort of behavior is from Jess, you might not understand my deep concern and fear over this period of illness!

Thankfully, Jess was only sick all of Saturday evening, night and through the morning on Sunday. Though his throat still hurts today he's no longer suffering with the other symptoms. His symptoms: sore throat, head ache (think migraine), eyes hurting so much he couldn't keep them open, skin hurting, feet hurting so much it hurt to walk, joint pain, achy-ness (this is separate because he mentioned it as a separate pain from the joint and skin pain), and a pretty high fever. He was in bed, pretty much, from the time he got home from work until around 10 or 11am Sunday morning.

I'm sure he would have been able to sleep all day Sunday, but by 10 or 11 I was cracking. I had slept SUPER poorly that night because my whole body was alert for any indication that Jess needed me. (He got out of bed twice, but didn't call me.) Ria was sick as well, so I was trying to keep an ear our for her. She had what Daddy had, except that she also threw up. That last bit happened at 4am, so I was up with her changing her bed, helping her get a bath, and then dressed and back in bed. That was probably about 45 minutes missing from my restless sleep. At about 6am Jess woke me because he was hungry. Totally fine since he was so weak it was amazing he got out of bed on his own to tell me this. But, of course, another bunch of sleep missing from this preggie lady's night.

So, by 10 or 11 am the girls were awake and the thing that caused my "crack" is that Kat was inconsolable. She was completely and utterly DONE with being kept away from her Daddy. She stood outside the bedroom door and kept hollerin, "Daeee!" I tried to coax her away and comfort her. It was all to no avail, however, because she just KNEW he was home and she hadn't been able to see him for much too long. So, I gave up to my fatigue and frustration and woke Jess up. Basically he just had the girls in the room with him at first. He did eventually get up with them, but I was in dream land most of the time until about 1pm, so I'm not really sure what occurred during that time! I did wake up around 1pm (getting up and around), but I was still so tired I could have easily slept at LEAST a few more hours.

It seems pretty likely that I was/am coming down with something else or having a relapse of the stuff that Jess and Ria had (since that's what I had LAST weekend, which is why I missed church then). Thankfully my experience with it was not as severe as Jessie's. Probably because I couldn't function and DID sleep more than he was able to! However, it seems more likely that I'm on the verge of some upper resperatory crapola because I woke up hacking junk up. :( OH, I HATE that kind of illness!!! That and barf are the two I handle worst. Puke is pretty self-explanatory, but the upper respiratory is really difficult for me because I was sick with that for at least 3 months when I was preggie with Ria and it's been really difficult for me to cope AND overcome that kind of junk ever since.

AH, well. I'm sure everything will work out.

Food StorageI'm still very anxious about this issue. I haven't mentioned it much because I haven't had much to add, but I am trying to scrounge together every bit of moolah I can to get more. It is VERY slow going, though, since Jess is working fewer hours and fewer days at the Almond Blossom Cafe. This is a bit more of a trial and tribulation than I was expecting BECAUSE of my anxiety about food storage.

HomeschoolingI've found a BUNCH of really wonderful resources within the last week (actually less). I haven't made time to add them to my homschool links yet, but I plan to try to update that sooner than later. I may actually have to make more sections because I have many that are sort of Math specific now. (I've been really trying to beef up my ability to delve into Math with Ria since she's so excited to do it now.) Last week we didn't do school each day due to my focus on keeping the house to Jessie's specifications.

The House IssueSo, when Jess laid into me about the house, one of the many unfair things he said to me had to do with his reality rather than actual reality. That is one of the amazing, powerful, and wonderful things about words: their inherent and potent ability to reveal to listener/hearer the reality in which the speaker/writer lives (or visits as with fiction writing/reading). He made specific mention (a few times during the course of expressing his issues with my housekeeping) of how the house was "ALWAYS" this or "ALWAYS" that, which he saw as extremely sickening or depressing or whatever. The problem with universal terms is that they are ALMOST always incorrect! Universal terms generally require modifiers that take away the sting of their universality. Universal terms, though, reveal the living reality for the speaker in that they illustrate for the listener what the speaker experiences. So, for Jess, no matter how many times I try to clear the counters and keep them that way, those "spots" (regardless of how long their maintainance) didn't exist AT ALL! This is particularly troubling in issues, such as this one for me, that is a sort of ingrained behavior that I am being required by my partner to change (with no help from him, I might add!).

Clear counters in the home in which I was raised were almost never seen. That is not to say that my Mom was a horrible housekeeper. It is, more, to say that counters were not THE priority in home maintainance. Now, I understand that I am not beholden to the past in which I was raised. I am completely free to design my life as I see fit. And I am. I'm just working on making so many HUGE changes that counters are just so far from the radar as to be nonexistant. And, I beleive, rightly so - really! I mean, when someone has anger issues - regardless of the degree, in my opinion, changing that life-long behavior is SUCH a huge mental, emotional, and time consumer as to make other changes difficult, if not impossible.

Given that the dealing with the anger is difficult enough to tackle alone; in addition to changing from a daily yeller to a NON-yeller, I am also modifying my physical behavior (from sedentary to daily exerciser!). This, too, is not just as simple a change as it might seem, especially for many thin women for whom exercise and daily activity have been a part of their life. It, for me, is a whole reality shift! It means that I have to spend at least 30 minutes outside of actual exercise in preparing for and getting out of the activity of exercise. That's not really such a big deal, especially for a person who values themselves enough to spend that time on themselves without wondering a bit if they are worth it. (Peek into one of the issues I face daily.) On top of that comes the aggravation of dealing with the daughters... they are not completely cooperative and rightly so - who wants to sit in a buggy for 60+ minutes. This compounds my issue (the peeked at one) because I'm inconveniencing my girls and their aggravations causes some in me - and then I'm back to fighting myself and my anger issues! I could continue, but will desist for now.

Basically, my point is that Jess makes all these demands - on top of what he already knows I expect of/for myself (he has made it clear that my anger issue and physical appearance are displeasing to him, in a very kind way - if that's possible about two issues that are almost a part of ME). And then he wonders why part of the house fall apart. ARGH! And then he reveals to me, by his words, that the efforts I have made (successfully) in the past don't even exist to him.

The whole point, really, in giving so much detail and explanation on this subject it to get to the thing that's really troubling me right now. Jess hasn't commented about the maintainance of the house/counters/table. It's very disheartening because I can see how his revealed reality is created - if he doesn't often or adequately acknowledge improvements, they just fade from memory! :( Very frustrating for this WORDS OF AFFIRMATION chica, I must say!